PPC News Roundup: Google To Overhaul AdWords for Multi-Screen World

Rachel Poole and Sarah Kemp share the latest in paid search news and advice, including an AdWords Redesign, Bing Ads testing and changes to Google Shopping.

Google Embarks on Year-Long Redesign of AdWords Interface

Google will redesign its AdWords software in order to help marketers reach consumers in a multi-screen world. Google has devised a year-long project in which it will be carrying out a complete overhaul of the AdWords product. AdWords will be completely redesigned due to the increasing complexity for marketers connecting with consumers through multiple devices, and in new ways such as display and video.

The vice president of AdWords Product Management, Jerry Dischler said:

This rise in complexity has created the need to re-imagine AdWords, and over the past year, our product teams have been thinking hard about how we can make AdWords as relevant for the next 15 years as the first 15. From creating a single Shopping campaign to updating thousands of text ads, we needed to do this in a way that works well for all advertisers around the world, regardless of size or objective.

The new AdWords interface will incorporate Material design, the design language at the core of Google’s other products, such as Maps, Search and Gmail.

Bing Ads Testing New Extensions in Beta

Bing is testing social extension ads in the US. This new form of advertising gives companies the ability to promote their social media channels in search results. The social extensions appear below the text on adverts in Bing search results pages, and can be used to reach a company’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr accounts directly from the results page.

ZATO (PPC agency) owner, Kirk Williams, said: “it is kind of scary that Bing Ads might pull random content from the landing page to use as a description, especially when many advertisers spend time and money carefully crafting their ad copy.” It is currently unknown whether or not advertisers can opt out of the test.

As this feature is currently only in test phase, it is unclear if will become a permanent addition to Bing search results. We will keep you posted.

Changes to Google Shopping

With the removal of Google right side ads in February 2016, there is now even more room for Google Shopping PLAs (product listing ads). It is important to understand the changes taking place in order to maximize efficiency on Google Shopping PLAs. Jennifer Johnstone from Search Engine Watch outlined the Google Shopping changes in her recent blog:

PLAs get more third-party traffic In 2014, Google announced partnerships with various different retail sites and e-commerce sites, allowing them to show product listing ads on their web properties. In 2015, Google search partners’ share of third party PLA traffic saw huge increases.

Google has since hosted expandable PLA tests, which gave users the ability to expand the PLAs at the top of search results to an amount of up to 16 products at one time. This allows the PLAs to take up the top half of the SERPs, giving those advertisers not in the top 5 an increase in impressions and clicks.

New PLA ranking system This has been in beta since 2014 but the modifier is now pulling through for searches such as 'best' and 'top'.